Data Redistribution Algorithms for Heterogeneous Processor Rings

We consider the problem of redistributing data on homogeneous and heterogeneous ring of processors. The problem arises in several applications, each time after that a load-balancing mechanism is invoked (but we do not discuss the load-balancing mechanism itself). We provide algorithms that aim at optimizing the data redistribution, both for uni-directional and bi-directional rings, and we give complete proofs of correctness. One major contribution of the paper is that we are able to prove the optimality of the proposed algorithms in all cases except that of a bi-directional heterogeneous ring, for which the problem remains open.